The below list are the cases which were affected by the case of convicted murderer Kho Jabing, who robbed and murdered a Chinese construction worker named Cao Ruyin in Singapore on 17 February 2008. Kho Jabing was convicted of murder and sentenced to death on 30 July 2010, and lost his appeal on 24 May 2011. Later, when the changes to Singapore's death penalty laws took effect in January 2013, Kho was re-sentenced to life imprisonment and 24 strokes of the cane on 14 August of that same year. However, the prosecution filed an appeal and it led to Kho being sentenced to death once again, albeit by a 3–2 decision. Kho was consequently executed on 20 May 2016.
The outcome of the prosecution's appeal set the main guiding principles for judges to decide when the death penalty should be warranted – whether an offender had demonstrated a blatant disregard for human life or viciousness or both during the killing – and when it was inappropriate based on the circumstances of whichever murder case even without an intention to cause death. Not only did Kho Jabing have an effect on Singapore's legal history through the death penalty, he also left behind a legacy for the requirements of reopening any concluded criminal appeals through the first of his three last-minute appeals made in November 2015, which effectively suspended his hanging. The Court of Appeal, in dismissing Kho's appeal in April 2016 (the month before Kho's execution in May), earlier ruled that the reviews of concluded criminal appeals would be allowed "only in truly exceptional cases" to avoid potential miscarriage of justice.
Singapore's death penalty guidelines for murder (2015–present) The below sequential list of cases are the murder cases and appeals that were directly or indirectly effected by the landmark ruling of the Court of Appeal regarding Kho Jabing's fate in 2015.
Murder of taxi driver Yuen Swee Hong (11 April 2009)
Shortly after the conclusion of the prosecution's appeal, it did not take long before the appeal verdict of Kho Jabing's case had a direct effect on another appeal made by the prosecution against another High Court decision to re-sentence a murderer to life imprisonment.
Another appeal filed by the prosecution for the re-sentencing of a murderer was that of convicted murderer and Chinese national Wang Wenfeng. Wang was initially sentenced to death for killing 57-year-old taxi driver Yuen Swee Hong during an attempted armed robbery, but he was eventually re-sentenced to life imprisonment and 24 strokes of the cane on 14 November 2013 after the new death penalty laws took effect in January of that same year. Wang committed the crime on 11 April 2009 when he tried to rob Yuen and threatened him from behind the driver's seat with the knife. A struggle ensued, and the driver was injured with knife wounds and bled heavily. Panicked upon seeing the driver's limp body, Wang thought that the man had died and abandoned the body in a nearby forest. He later attempted to extort ransom by using Yuen's phone to contact Yuen's widow, Mdm Chan Oi Lin, lying to her that her husband was kidnapped. Chan, who had a son and daughter with Yuen, contacted the police without the realisation that her husband had died. Wang was promptly arrested and despite his denials of the crime, Wang later confessed to the killing out of eventual guilt and led the police to the place where he disposed Yuen's body. Wang, who was married with a daughter back in China, was charged with murder and later sentenced to death in September 2011; he also lost his appeal sometime before his re-sentencing. The reasons behind his re-sentencing was that he had no intention to murder but to rob, and there was no premeditation to cause death.
DPP Bala Reddy, who led the prosecution in the re-sentencing trial, argued in that trial itself that Wang's case deserved the death penalty because Wang had shown a high degree of premeditation and planning in committing the crime and the time he chosen to commit the crime – 4 in the morning – was the time likely to have a lower risk of detection of his crime, and there should be a deterrence of future crimes committed against public transport workers, especially taxi drivers; and the courts should severely punish those who commit violent, opportunistic and heinous offences. Wang's defence lawyer Wendell Wong meanwhile, argued for a life term with not more than 10 strokes of the cane, pointed out that there is no increase in the number of cases where taxi drivers were killed, a point which Justice Lee Seiu Kin (the High Court judge presiding Wang's original trial) agreed with. He also said if Wang had wanted to kill Yuen, he would not have to wait for the struggle to erupt. Wong also said, "He (referring to Wang Wenfeng) had every opportunity and the upper hand to stab Yuen the moment he stepped into the rear passenger side of the taxi." But Wang did not do so.
Like in Kho Jabing's case, the prosecution filed an appeal for the death penalty on Wang. At the time of the delivery of the judgement of the appeal over Kho's case, the prosecution is still appealing against Wang's sentence. While pending its appeal, the prosecution reviewed Wang's case extensively while they referred to the written verdict of Kho's case. Eventually, on 19 April 2015, they decided to drop the appeal against Wang, effectively making Wang Wenfeng escaping the gallows, as the high degree of decomposition of Yuen Swee Hong's corpse made it so that the prosecution could not fully assess the level of brutality of Wang's attack on the deceased victim. They also took note that unlike Kho's premeditated assault on Cao Ruyin, Wang injured the taxi driver during a struggle. Wang is currently in prison serving his life sentence (backdated to the date of his arrest) with the possibility of parole after 20 years. He was the fifth convicted murderer to escape the gallows since the changes to the law, as preceded by Kamrul Hasan Abdul Quddus, a Bangladeshi national who was re-sentenced to imprisonment for life with 10 strokes of the cane for the 2007 murder of his girlfriend.
The death of Shanmuganathan Dillidurai (29–30 May 2010)
One notable case that was affected by the appeal verdict was the 2010 Kallang Slashings, where a group of robbers from Sarawak committed a series of violent robberies around Kallang Area, leading to the violent death of Indian construction worker Shanmuganathan Dillidurai during the last of these four robberies. One of the perpetrators, Micheal Anak Garing, who used a 58 cm long parang to fatally attack and slash Shanmuganathan while robbing him, was convicted of murder on 20 January 2014 and sentenced to death on 20 April the following year (as the trial judge found that he had violently attacked his victims in each robbery and thus his conduct warrants the death penalty). In upholding Micheal's death sentence in 2017, the Court of Appeal, with reference to the judgement of Kho's case, were satisfied that Micheal had attacked Shanmuganathan in a savage and merciless manner and demonstrated a blatant disregard for human life during the attack.
Another one of the perpetrators, Tony Anak Imba, who stood trial together with Micheal, was also found guilty of murder; however, unlike Micheal, he was spared the gallows and sentenced to life in prison and 24 strokes of the cane, with the sentence backdated to the date of his conviction. The prosecution appealed for the death penalty, but the Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal in 2017, as they found that Tony did not sufficiently reflect a blatant disregard for human life from the review of his conduct and mental state at the time of the crime, citing that even if he likely knew that Micheal would use the parang on Shanmuganathan as he did on all their previous victims, and had been the one initiating the attack, it is insufficient to indicate any blatant disregard for human life on Tony's part. Thus, they upheld Tony's life sentence, and currently, Tony Imba is still placed under incarceration with respect to his life sentence since 20 January 2014. The other two main accomplices were each sentenced to severe penalties of 33 years’ imprisonment with 24 strokes of the cane each in 2013 and 2018 respectively for four charges of armed robbery with hurt while the remaining four arrested in connection to the crime spree of Kallang were imprisoned between 2 and 6 years and caned between 6 and 12 strokes of the cane.
On 22 March 2019, after losing his final appeal for clemency, 30-year-old Micheal Garing was put to death in Changi Prison for his crime. A day after his execution, Micheal's body was sent back to his hometown in Sarawak, Malaysia for burial.
Murder of Dexmon Chua Yizhi (28–29 December 2013)
Another example is a 58-year-old murder convict named Chia Kee Chen, whose life imprisonment sentence was overturned by the Court of Appeal upon the prosecution's appeal and was given the death penalty on 27 June 2018 for the brutal killing of his wife's 37-year-old former lover Dexmon Chua Yizhi. On 28 December 2013, Chia abducted the victim with two accomplices, Indonesian Febri Irwansyah Djatmiko and Singaporean Chua Leong Aik from a carpark in Choa Chu Kang, and inside their van, he and Febri electrocuted and grievously assaulted the victim until he died (during the assault, Chua Leong Aik fled half-way out of fear) and later abandoned Dexmon Chua's dead body in a Singapore Armed Forces live firing area in Lim Chu Kang. Prior to the cold-blooded murder, Chia was said to have discovered the affair between his own 47-year-old wife Serene Goh Yen Hoon and the victim Dexmon Chua (who was Goh's colleague) in November 2012, and out of revenge, he planned to kill Dexmon Chua.
Chua Leong Aik, who acted as driver, was subsequently arrested on 9 January 2013 and nearly 3 years later, on 8 January 2016, Chua Leong Aik was sentenced to 5 years' imprisonment by Senior judge Kan Ting Chiu for abetting the abduction while Febri fled Singapore and went on the run in Indonesia. As for Chia meanwhile, he was brought to trial for murder in late 2016, and he was found guilty of murder under Section 300(c) of the Penal Code on 17 January 2017, and sentenced to life imprisonment seven months later despite the prosecution's demands for a death sentence.
The Court of Appeal, in sentencing Chia to death a year later, citing the guiding principles set by Kho's case, stated that Chia had "exhibited such viciousness and such a blatant disregard for the life of the deceased, and are so grievous an affront to humanity and so abhorrent that the death penalty is the appropriate, indeed the only adequate sentence", given that he masterminded the abduction out of revenge for his wife's adultery, shown a high degree of premeditation and planning and had a lack of remorse. The three-judge panel, led by Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, also cited that although it may be true that Febri could have inflicted the fatal injuries, he did so under Chia's directions and Chia himself not only do not tell Febri to stop the assault, but joined in the attack. Before his arrest, Chia even calmly went for a holiday trip to Malaysia with his wife and two daughters (then aged 18 and 22 respectively) while taking the chance to help Febri to flee the country.
CJ Menon, who read out the judgement he made together with two other judges Judith Prakash and Tay Yong Kwang, said in his own words regarding Chia's role, "One who hires an assassin to kill another or who otherwise controls a killer, cannot be less culpable than the one who does the killing." Additionally, Chia's appeal against his conviction was dismissed by the same three judges in the same court where the prosecution's appeal was heard and allowed.
Chan Lie Sian v Public Prosecutor (14 January 2014)